Twenty-First Century Occupational Loomings

In his recent business book entitled "A Whole New Mind," Daniel Pink, former speechwriter for Al Gore, outlines the modern day challenges educated, logical, and mba/j.d.-oriented workers will confront in a Brand New World. Along the way, Pink succinctly diagnoses the major problems Western countries will face in the twenty-first century.

[Before you stop reading, I thought the same thing: What relevance does a business book have? Well, a lot, so says Tacitus and Pulitzer-Prize winning author/journalist Thomas Friedman.]

In the first half of the book, Mr. Pink asks his readers to consider: Can computers do it faster? Can overseas labor do it cheaper? Are your skills in demand? Are your skills overly abundant? His answer is clear that the majority of workers within the United States will soon answer yes to these questions: there will be little demand for number-crunchers(computers), white-collar jobs (outsourcing to India/China), and those of whom receiving juris doctorates and mba degrees--43,883 and 110,000 per year, respectively (saturation of the demand for a limited number of positions). These jobs that traditionally were considered one's best bets relied upon left-brained thinking, those that our society has advocated through its type of tests (LSAT, SAT) and strictly objective, detail oriented approaches to problems.

No more, says Mr. Pink.

His argument follows that the skill set that will succeed in the new century will be those who have fully encompassed right-brained thinking into our trained and true left-brained thinking, thus creating, as the title denotes, a whole new mind. A mind that can see the big picture trends within a comprehensive and large amount of evidence. A mind that can play and be creative in coming up with solutions. A mind that gives the narrative to these solutions and facts. A mind that empathizes. A mind that can design or improve on existing designs. And, most important, a mind that finds meaning within its work.

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Though a fascinating thesis, Mr. Pink inadequately addresses several key flaws within his argument. First, those six principles on which he argues the success of American jobs will depend is highly speculative and under substantiated. Even if they were the only six, why wouldn't India and Asia (and Russia) be able to develop them as much, if not more so, than many Western countries? Second, What happens when the market is flooded creative, design workers? Will the pendulum swing back or drop off? For much of his forward looking argument, he does not question what impact it will have later on down the line. Thirdly, his argument for the numerical decline of the the lawyer profession is that computers will be able to pull up prepared forms by a drastically smaller number of lawyers. These seems almost unfathomable, considering how many divisions and sectors there are in the legal profession. And finally, his proposal is very much a simplistic outlook on the future job market. Many factors will determine the twenty-first century worker. His version, the "conceptual worker," though perhaps valuable in ways, will not become the standard.

Appendage:
I wrote to Mr. Pink as per his suggestion in the epilogue of the book. I wrote him of my anxiety and frustration that, despite encompassing those necessary values he outlined in his book, despite my achievements at one of the finest liberal arts college in the nation, I remained jobless. He replied within four days with words of encouragement and blamed the current market.